Motherboard Guide

Introduction

Introduction

The Republic of Gamers (R.O.G.) motherboard series marked a move away from lifestyle computing for ASUS (the AI Proactive and AI Life product lines) into the realm of enthusiasts and gamers exclusively. Their very first and flagship board, the ASUS Crosshair was launched for the AMD AM2 platform using NVIDIA's nForce 590 SLI chipset. The Crosshair was an innovative motherboard in terms of usability for enthusiasts with strategically located connector LEDs, intuitive POST debug display and of course, incredibly extensive BIOS and the usual ASUS mix of performance and reliability. Now, moving ahead of the Crosshair, we will be taking a spin at the latest R.O.G. motherboard, the new ASUS Striker Extreme.

The Striker Extreme is the Crosshair's counterpart for the Intel platform and is based on the spanking new NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI chipset. Like all ASUS premium motherboards, the Striker Extreme comes with a very rich packaging and heavy promises. ASUS has also expanded on its software bundle in a bid to attract the gaming community. While the Crosshair previously bundled 3DMark06, the Striker Extreme adds the full retail version of UbiSoft's strategic shooter, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter as well.